This invention will relate to a vessel for transport of floating buoyant barges and other containers.
Our earlier filed U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 511,492, filed Oct. 2, 1974, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,913,512 Dated Oct. 21, 1975, describes a vessel in which barges or other types of containers are partially supported in the vessel by their own buoyancy and wherein they are loaded in and out while floating in the sea. The present invention may be considered an improvement or a modification of that invention.
Like that invention, the present invention utilizes a hold which is at all times kept flooded and in free communication with the ocean. The present invention is more particularly directed to the use of barges such as those used in the Lykes' SEABEE barge container cargo program, and is adapted to accommodate these barges. In some forms of the invention it will accommodate the SEEBEE type of barge as substantially the only type of container, while in others it will accommodate other types of barges or containers, and some forms of the invention provide for mixed cargoes in which some of the containers are one kind of barge and others are a different kind of barge or containers.
The broad claims in the previous application cover the general aspects of the present invention, but that application does not show specific apparatus for retaining in place some of the very large barges that can be used with the present vessel. In the prior invention the illustrations and the descriptions related to the use of LASH type of containerized cargo lighters or units, and these units were relatively small and with specially reinforced supports and lifting points so that they could be secured by projections in the submarine cargo-supporting structure of the vessel which engaged sockets provided in the bottom corners, as standard practice, in those LASH lighters; and the LASH lighters were held in place in the vessel by hydraulically actuated spuds having sockets which engaged projections extending up from each of the four corners of the LASH container. The present invention accommodates the much larger barges where the four-point LASH support system is inadequate. In the present invention the spuds which hold the barges in place are adapted to engage portions of substantial length along the upper side edges of the barges to provide needed adequate retention.
In our prior application, Ser. No. 511,492, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,913,512 we also illustrated a system in which the LASH lighters were placed in the hold athwartships sideways rather than fore and aft. This was quite practical with those relatively small containers, but it is impractical when the barges are long, because it would require an excessive beam width for the transporting vessel. Accordingly, the present invention solves the problem of excessive beam width by providing a novel structure in which the hold is divided into two longitudinally extending parts by a centerline bulkhead or partition, and the barges or other containers are loaded into the two hold sections in a fore-and-aft orientation. This hold structure enables a large number of such barges to be carried and accommodated rather than having to have excessive beam width and enables fore-and-aft loading and unloading.
Another form of the invention illustrates a "Coaster" type of vessel in which a still different type of barge is used, namely, a deck barge which requires that the transporting vessel be covered to protect exposed deck cargo on the barges. The vessel accommodates the Coaster barges in a similar manner, using the divided hold, fore-and-aft loading, and spuds like those for the SEABEE type of barges, possibly located at different intervals in order to accommodate them.
Yet another form of the invention enables mixed loading of SEABEE barges and LASH containers or other types of barges or containers. By providing a structure in which both kinds of spuds are used, some being used to provide a fourcorner locking of LASH containers and others being used to provide a locking contact for the large barges distributed over long edge contact areas.